


Revenant

by Beth Winter (BethWinter)



Series: He who pours out vengeance [1]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Abigail has daddy issues, Canon-Typical Violence, Charles Vane would like to know why these things always happen to him, Colonialism, Complete, Count of Monte Christo strikes back, Cultural References, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Gen, Identity Issues, Identity Porn, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Mental Institutions, Multi, Nightmares, Post-Season/Series 02, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Secret Identity, never underestimate small determined girls, reasons to hate Marcus Aurelius
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-26
Updated: 2017-02-26
Packaged: 2018-09-27 01:30:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 12
Words: 18,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9944372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BethWinter/pseuds/Beth%20Winter
Summary: After Charlestown burns, Abigail Ashe meets a man who says he was a friend of her father's. He gives her a choice.revenant1. Someone who returns from a long absence.2. A person or thing reborn.3. A supernatural being that returns from the dead; a zombie or ghost.





	1. Abigail

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fyre](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fyre/gifts).



> “Hatred is blind; rage carries you away; and he who pours out vengeance runs the risk of tasting a bitter draught.”  
> ― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

**I. Abigail**

Abigail feels cheated, like a reader who picked up a book based on a description that addressed only the first chapter.

Leaving school, she expected a respectable leather-bound travel narrative, with perhaps enough romance mixed in to keep readers' interest. The Fancy's guns thundered her into a horror story printed in running ink on scraps of reused newsprint. Charles Vane dragged her down to a dungeon-wrapped mystery, and Eleanor Guthrie led her up into adventure. At Captain Flint's table she was part of a respectable tale of politics until, with a gunshot, she was in the kind of nightmare children whisper about under the covers at night, one where people you love turn out to have been strangers all along.

She'll have to think of a new name for the story she is living now, the kind of story that happens after the end of the world. News of the death of Charlestown reached them on the road to Savannah. News of the death of her father. The servants were distraught enough for their own families that no-one protested her orders to turn around. One wing of the house was shattered by cannonballs, the other untouched. She had mind enough to open it to people in need of shelter. They will use the rooms without roofs to store the corpses until recognised and taken away for burial.

Abigail's dead are laid out on the large table in the dining room. Her father looks sad in death, as if in the last moments his regrets became real. She cannot tell Miranda's expression; the crumbling bricks robbed her of seeing her friend's face again. Abigail recognised her only by the dress.

In the parlour, the pianoforte's keys burn her. She goes back to the book she laid aside the night before, when she'd heard the gun. She slips her fingers over and under the covers as she reads. The dedication inside is raised, scrawled with a touch bold enough to be readable to her fingers.

The footman has to touch her arm to get her attention. She schools her face in polite, aware interest.

"Miss Ashe, you have a visitor."

"Please ask them to come tomorrow." There have been too many condolences today. "Please ask them to come to the funeral."

"It's not someone from town, Miss. A... gentleman from a ship that just docked in the harbour." His tone is hesitant, unsure. "The ship doesn't have a name, just eyes painted on the prow. The crew is helping clear the rubble at the waterfront. Miss Ashe, he asked to see your father."

"You did tell him-?"

Abigail sees the unease in his eyes and rushes out of the parlour. The dining room is just down the hall. She slows before entering, preparing for anything she might see.

The man is standing over her father's body. He is very tall. For a moment she takes his clothes for a pale blue frock coat and breeches, but the cut and embroidery are different, the trousers long and looser. The dark sash at his waist and the curved sword hanging from it bring to mind illustrations of warriors from far-off Indies. His skin is almost dark enough for a Mughal gentleman, and she can't tell if his hair is blond or grey with age.

Then he turns and looks at her with blue, European eyes.

"Did you come to talk to my father?" Her teachers would be appalled, but she lost her manners somewhere in the abyss between Bristol and Nassau.

"I wanted to look him in the face," the man says. "I was looking forward to it."

She nods. That body, lying there, is not her father any more.

"Why did Peter die?"

Because of lies and truths, she doesn't say. "Captain Flint killed him."

"I asked why, not how."

She lays her book aside to pick at the cloth that hides Miranda's ruined face. "Because of her," she says finally. "Because his man killed her, and because she wanted him dead."

He clicks his tongue. "She must have been a remarkable woman."

"She was my friend," Abigail says. "She was my friend, and he put her dead body on trial for piracy, and I'll never get to tell him why that was wrong."

He reaches out, and she thinks she might slap him if he tries to comfort her, but his hand drops to her book.

"Marcus Aurelius," she says. It's borrowed, the only book in English in the ship's library, and she might never get to give it back. "He has a lot to say about the natural character of death."

"He was an ancient, coddled hypocrite." The man's fingers stroke the red leather. "Suppose that men kill thee, cut thee in pieces, curse thee. What then can these things do to prevent thy mind from remaining pure, wise, sober, just? Words of a man who was never cut into pieces himself."

She wants to snatch the book away from him, but instead she watches as he riffles through the pages. He doesn't stop at the dedication, though the elegant inscription would draw anyone's eye, and closes the covers sharply.

"Is this Peter's book?"

"I got it from Captain Flint. I asked about the dedication," she adds. "He said that person was dead."

His eyes dart toward the fireplace and Abigail tenses, but instead he hands the book back to her. "Read it. Then we can talk about where the old man erred, and where he lied."

She holds the book in front of her. "Why did you come here?"

He's looking into the flames now. "I knew your father once. I thought to talk to him again. I wanted to find what he cared about the most. You, I would guess. Perhaps the town. His life, most of all. It seems Captain Flint has beaten me to taking away all three."

She wants to scream, run, hide, but she knows by now that it doesn't help. "What would you have done to me?"

"I would begin by asking you what you wanted." He looks at her. This near to the fire, his hair is golden, shot through with grey. "What do you want, Abigail Sarah Ashe?"

She looks down at Miranda's body again. From the glittering salons of London to a room where the windows are shattered by cannon balls.

"I don't have choices," she tells him. "I did as my father told me to. Then I was captured by pirates and I did what they told me to. Captain Vane took me from Captain Lowe, and Miss Guthrie took me from him and gave me to Captain Flint. Now I will do what my guardian tells me to." She's not sure who is her guardian. Her estranged uncle, maybe. Her godfather died years ago.

"If I cannot talk to Peter, I think I'd like to talk to Captain Flint. Where would I find him?"

"Nassau." She watches his eyes drift slowly closed, then open again. "That's his home port. It's important to him, too, and to Captain Vane. They'll be going there."

"Indeed."

"I doubt he'll be inclined to talk," she admits. "And Nassau is a difficult place. You would need a plan to reach him."

"I have about seven." He smiles ruefully, the expression taking a decade off his face. "After a decent night's sleep, I'm certain I'll have seventeen. But for now, you'll show me Peter's study and his seal."

"Why?" She steps closer to him and the warmth of the fire. There's a faint scent of anise around him that pushes away the corpses and smoke.

"So that I can write my charters of trade with the major cities of the Carolinas, and my authorisation to take over the Nassau fort. You'll have to check them, it's been some time since I've seen Peter's hand."

"Why would I do that?"

"Because I'll also write his last will and testament, commanding you to my care." His eyes are wide and guileless and she's the most afraid she's been since the fog cleared from her head in the dungeons beneath the fort. "You can go into the care of whatever guardian Peter picked for you and trust him for a time to defend your virtue and his own greed from the fortune hunters that will besiege an heiress, if you can even escape the Carolinas to reach him without being forced into a marriage. Or you can come with me on a journey that will give you room to grow and heal, new worlds for your mind to know, and full control of your money once you reach your majority. You wanted a choice, Abigail."

She can hear his breathing, calm and measured, and the rasp of her own through a clenched throat. She forces her chest to match his rhythm until she can speak.

"What should I call you?"

He taps the book in her arms. "Marcus, I think. Marcus Flamel."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All quotes from Marcus Aurelius's Meditations, George Long translation (1862, but I couldn't find an older one accessible online).


	2. Flint

**II. Flint**

Tortuga is thirty years past its heyday, but the old port can still be counted on for supplies, news, and people smart enough to stay away from a man determined to do some serious drinking.

Flint has a bottle of kill-devil and a deserted corner of the pier, just out of reach of tavern lights. The noise is easy to ignore, after a lifetime of ship bustle. Even his cabin isn't his own now, with Silver fitfully sleeping off the shock of amputation.

He remembers the first time he had to share a cabin after making lieutenant. On the way to the Bahamas with Miranda. He spent weeks staring at the wall as she bustled and planned and befriended anyone on the ship who could have useful information about settling a homestead and raising flock, bringing all ship-related information back to the cabin despite his lack of reaction. She kept him moving then, and he took over once they arrived. He held her when the house was dirty, when her hands broke and bled, when the first chickens died. For the money from his first prize, they bought a house that neither of them mentioned was big enough for three.

The liquor burns his tongue. He remembers finding her with that letter from Peter Ashe. He regrets not having more time to kill him.

Miranda's been a part of his reality for a decade, while he shared not even a year with Thomas. He shouldn't be surprised losing her hurts as much.

He wonders if Thomas would recognise either of them now. How Thomas would have changed if he'd been released like they thought he would be. He tries to imagine Thomas watching Miranda twist Mr Guthrie around her fingers, Thomas arguing politics with Eleanor, Thomas laughing about the heat and rain in the summer. He pictures making land and having them both waiting for him, Miranda sharing delicious gossip, Thomas's hand on his shoulder and the promise of much more in his eyes.

Flint's own eyes hurt like they do in a storm.

Dreams of Miranda are as pointless as dreams of Thomas now. He's used to plotting his own course, but he has no experience picking his own destination. There was his grandfather, there was Hennessey, then there was Thomas. And there was Miranda.

He has a knife in his hand and the bottle raised before Vane emerges from the shadows.

"Easy," Vane says. "The fuck would I kill you for when I don't even have men enough to sail your ship?"

"The fuck would you try to kill me for," Flint corrects him. "What do you want?"

"Came to see you haven't pitched head first off the pier."

"Are we a team now?" He's still surprised Vane tagged along to Tortuga, but they'd been too busy fleeing Charlestown to confer. Vane's sailing Ned Lowe's old tub, which is about as big as he's got people left for. Not that Flint's complement is much better. He's lost too many good people over the past month.

"We'll be side by side on the bounty notices." Vane leans against the railing next to him. "Think we're going to rate an act of Parliament, like Avery?"

"No. We only shot up an English town, not a foreign queen." Flint grins. "Unless they mistake you for him. Same ship name."

Vane snorts. No-one's heard of Henry Avery for going on twenty years, and wood from his Fancy still makes up parts of the tavern in Nassau. "Need to find a new name for her. Doesn't feel like a Ranger."

Flint takes another drink from the bottle. "The Calypso?"

"What's that?"

"Greek nymph." He considers who he's talking to. "Water spirit from an old story. She rescued a famous sailor when he was shipwrecked on his way home. The name means the hidden one."

"You're fucked in the head," Vane tells him. From the way he's swaying, he's had his own portion of Haitian rotgut. From what Flint's heard, he has his own reasons to drink.

"When were you going to tell me about Guthrie?"

"Fuck. I don't know. What do you care?"

"We need Nassau working right to sell loot."

"Dozens of ports in the sea."

Flint suppresses the urge to push the younger man into the water. "Dozens of ports that'll shoot us on sight or don't have the capacity and trade links, like this place."

"What good's talking about it? Won't bring him back." Vane snarls, then subsides, reaching for Flint's bottle. "Won't bring her back."

"Eleanor," Flint says, because he likes being a bastard in ways that don't involve killing people, "should have strangled you in bed years ago."

"Wasn't supposed to end like that." Vane snorts. "And she'd knife me."

Across the harbour, a woman cries out. Someone's going to come home to judgement day itself.

"They'll kill her," Vane says. "They'll hang her."

"They'll interrogate her first. Especially after Charlestown. They'll want to catch us as soon as possible, and she's the one who knows us both. Might even offer her a pardon for it, and she'd be a fool not to take it."

Vane turns his head. There's something like hope in his eyes, and Flint wonders how old the other pirate is. Not that much older than Eleanor, and just as incomprehensibly wrapped up in pride and hate and a love he doesn't understand.

Just as useful, he thinks, and that's a Thomas thought. They'd share a sofa at a party, and when Miranda leaned over the back with another new piece of information gleaned from someone's giggling daughter, that would be Thomas's response. This is how we can use it to turn this and that person's actions towards good.

"You got yourself into this mess," Flint says. "We're at war with England now. We can disappear or we can dig in and wait."

"The Scarborough," Vane says. "Our ships, together, outgun her. Your gunner's better than the Navy's, too."

"It's been a week. She's halfway to England now."

Vane bows his head, like a whipped hound.

Flint watches the harbour. He remembers England taking away his own lover, the helplessness when a false friend told him there was nothing to be done.

"Her trial will take months. It's not going to be about what she's done. It's political, they'll be putting Nassau on trial."

"Fuck them."

"Too far." Flint tips his bottle, swallowing the last mouthful. It burns. "Politics, you can swing. With a big enough argument. Hostages, maybe. Especially Spanish ones. Threaten to get them involved unless Whitehall releases Eleanor."

Vane's eyes are wide. Somewhere behind him, a woman is standing, all in white. There is a hole in her forehead, and she is smiling.

Flint knocks his bottle against Vane's. "We'd need more men. Maybe more guns."

"Don't suppose I'm getting the Spaniard like you promised."

"I have more men than you right now. Lowe's tub is good enough."

Vane scowls. "I'll need to patch it up. Lowe didn't know the first thing about sailing."

"There's a beach a day away I've used for careening before. It'll fit two. Time enough to paint new names on the sides."

"You're giving the man'o'war a name?" Vane frowns, hazy with rum.

Flint shrugs one shoulder. "Might as well."

In the darkness of the harbour, lanterns mark the positions of the ships. A couple of run-down merchantmen. Vane's Fancy, whatever he'll call her. And Flint's Miranda.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Henry Avery took one of the biggest prizes in the history of piracy by robbing a Mughal convoy to Mecca, then escaped to Nassau, natch, where he used part of his prize and his ship, the Fancy, as a bribe for the governor to turn a blind eye. Since the Mughal Empire took offense to the point of endangering Britain's trade prospects with India, the British Parliament passed an act outlawing him especially and exempting him from all future pardons. He was never found, and may well have been one of Stevenson's inspirations for the character of Captain Flint.


	3. Abigail

**III. Abigail**

The ship has a name, after all, though it's painted on the prow in letters that look like an ornament to Abigail. She's the Eye of Lakshmi, and Lakshmi is a goddess, not a statue in someone's parlour but the kind with an altar on the mess deck and when Abigail lays a flower at her feet, the sailors whisper in quiet approval.

She picked the flowers on the hill where they buried Miranda. Her father has been laid to rest in the first row of the cemetary, with a dozen mourners, but the servants carried Miranda in a closed casket up the hill, to a quiet spot under a tree. Marcus lent her two dark-skinned men from the Eye to dig the grave. The cross is simple, with no name, but Abigail said her goodbye to Miranda Hamilton.

When she walked downhill, Marcus came out of the house to meet her. The possessions her father assembled for her were packed away, as were her papers. She had no goodbyes for Charlestown.

They are already setting off on the evening tide. Marcus tells her names as they walk through the ship, but the strange faces blur together, only a few committed to her memory. Fu-tien, the navigator, has a thick black braid and an idiosyncratic way of pronouncing very good English.The old woman who pinches her arm is called Dian, is the ship's doctor, and tells Marcus in some incomprehensible language that Abigail has very good skin, but not enough flesh. He seems to enjoy Abigail's mortification as he translates. All the crew call Marcus  _subahdar_ , which he tells her means 'governor' or someone in charge. She hears it in familiar London tones, and it makes her smile, just for a moment.

The captain is introduced as Mr Kalyan. He has the most impressive moustache Abigail has ever seen. He and Marcus talk quietly as she watches the ruins of Charlestown slide out of her life.

The sailors on the deck are cheerful and loud. Their language is confusing, on the edge of her comprehension. She catches the occasional English word, and many more that sound close enough to Spanish and Latin to needle her mind. Maybe half a dozen of them are pale enough to be English, and even of them she isn't sure. They work together closer than any crew she's watched before, and she supposes the long voyage around the Horn of Africa has bonded them together better than pirate battles.

A woman climbs up on the quarterdeck. She offers a cheerful greeting to Marcus and captain Kalyan, then spreads out a large length of cloth. This, she drapes over Abigail's hair and shoulders. The warmth is welcome, and Abigail conveys her thanks with gestures and a smile. She wonders how the woman's clothing would feel, a long caftan and trousers that differ from the men's only in proportion and embroidery. She doubts her stays and petticoats would let her climb that easily.

When the woman takes her hand and leads her under the deck, it turns out there are a dozen women on the ship. Only two of them have enough English to communicate, but it's more than she expected, and she lets them take care of her this evening, showing her the way to do things on the ship. The nightgown she's given is the softest cotton she's ever touched, and the robe they drape over it is like a king's mantle from old legends. Malika, the youngest of the women and not much older than Abigail herself, leads her to a cabin near the stern. Inside, the walls are covered with colourful hangings.

Marcus is finishing a letter on one side of a table inlaid with ivory. The other side has been cleared and holds the books she brought on board, the Meditations in pride of place.

It takes Abigail a moment to notice there are two hammocks strung on either side of the cabin, each with its own curtain, and a moment more to draw a relieved breath. He has not made any attempts to touch her thus far, but on this ship she can barely talk to anyone other than him.

He doesn't look up until she's seated in the other chair with her book. "Douse the lamp before you go to sleep. The lantern hook is loose, and the owner's cabin has priority for repairs only when the owner is on board."

"I thought you were the owner?" She knows so very little that each piece is a nugget she treasures.

"I'm her minority partner. Kalyan's in charge of this voyage."

She concentrates on her book as he gets into his hammock. The creak of the ship under sail means she cannot hear his breath. She lets herself get lost in the ancient words, the better to avoid the new nightmares that await her in sleep. Perhaps she can stay awake through the night, and sleep like the dead at dawn.

The scream that wakes her isn't her own. The lamp has sputtered out, the book is on the floor by her feet, and her legs take a moment to remember how to move.

Marcus's hands are clenched in the ropes of the hammock, trapped between the strands. He's whimpering fervent denials and prayers that blur into a chant of no, no, no, not again. The faintest moonlight from the window makes his hair dark, his mouth a void opened in a scream.

Abigail catches his wrists, pulling them out from between the ropes. His eyes open, blank and hopeless.

"You're here with me," she whispers. "We're on the Eye of Lakshmi. We're sailing from  Charlestown to Nassau." She swallows convulsively, forcing the words out. "Peter Ashe is dead."

He cranes his head, looking at the cabinet on the wall. She has to climb on top of him to reach it, but she finds the right bottle at the first try. The smell isn't the sweetness of laudanum she expected, the scent that haunts her, but something more wholesome and herbal. On impulse she sneaks a sip as well before putting it away.

It feels like hours before his breath evens out. She remembers how that feels, to lie there and wonder what is real. She does as Miranda did, fingers in his hair and quiet repetitions of names and destinations.

"I'm sorry," are the first coherent words he says.

"I know how that feels." She's grateful, absurdly grateful it's him, and not her, screaming awake first. "When it's me, I see the first pirates that captured me. Ned Lowe's men. They killed all of the crew because I was there. And they killed the women last. They forced me to drink - something, and the walls were bulging and the women were screaming. Mrs Wootton tried to hide me, and they-"

He turns his wrist so that he can catch her hand. "They bound me to the bed each night. They'd check every hour to see if I was still bound. They'd throw me into cold water, then leave me bound to freeze."

The words trigger a memory, stories whispered by a schoolmate's brother of a daring trip to see the moon-mad people. "Did they let you out? Did you escape?"

"It went on for months," he says. "Years. I was losing words, even Aurelius, even the Bible, book by book, until only Isaiah was left. The mirth of tabrets ceaseth, the noise of them that rejoice endeth, the joy of the harp ceaseth. I knew - I didn't know. I was losing thoughts."

Abigail shifts, and he moves to let her lean against him. The hammock swings under their movement. She's never been this close to a man before. She thinks he's used to sleeping with a woman, the way he brings an arm around her.

"I didn't think there'd be anger left," he whispers. "I never raised a hand to anyone in anger before, but when all else was gone, there was anger. There was crumbling brick in a corridor they herded us through. I picked up a shard and got my hands free that night. I thought they'd finally kill me for it."

Under her hand, she feels the scars around his wrist.

"There was only one guard. I had to convince him I was a danger. I'd never fought before. I didn't think it was so easy."

"Fighting?"

"Killing."

She can feel him trembling again. It feels like falling.

"I didn't think it could feel good."

"Captain Vane killed the pirates who first captured me," she tells him. "I feel good that they're dead."

"Old Aurelius would call us both barbarians," he mutters. "To hell with him."

She giggles, lulled to comfort by the swinging of the hammock. She can feel Marcus falling asleep too.

She wakes alone in the cabin, in the other hammock. The clothes laid out for her are embroidered and cut in that comfortable fashion she envied. Once dressed, she stands at the porthole and watches the sea rise and fall.

She thinks about that boy who told them of his visit to a lunatic asylum. There had been a reason for that conversation. Her father was the boy's godfather, but Abigail hasn't seen her own godfather since she was five. His mind broke when his wife ran away with his best friend, people whispered. He died in a lunatic asylum.

She sees the moon set over the water. She thinks about the book on the table, and the dedication Marcus didn't read.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a whole novel in what happened between the asylum and Charlestown. Suffice to say, this is a reward for quite a few services rendered to a powerful trading consortium out of Kolkata, plus a test of the ocean-worthiness of a new ship construction and the chance for more than a few crewmembers to get out of India for a few months/years until the heat dies down...


	4. Flint

**IV. Flint**

The refitted and careened Miranda and Vane's Renegade take half a dozen rich prizes in two weeks, detouring time and again from the route to Nassau. Flint doesn't bother flying the black until he can see the whites of the other captain's eyes. There is enough clothing in the hold to outfit every man of his crew passably as a Spaniard, and the Miranda's sails promise protection to unwary prey. He wonders at the ease - it's as if news of a warship's capture hasn't spread at all. Surely even if the gold was still on that beach, the soldiers must have sent a party to the nearest settlements to spread the word.

Vane spots the second ship by himself, out of view of the Miranda, and herds her in like a sheepdog. That one's Spanish captain looks affronted when the warship's promised safety belies itself, and Flint and Vane repeat the manoeuvre twice more. A hundred guns is a big stick to carry, even if after six prizes and twelve new men recruited to join his crew, they barely have enough hands to man half of them.

The fifth of the ships is a British Navy frigate heading for London. The log holds no trace of Eleanor Guthrie, but a pressed sailmaker is eager enough to talk about Captain Hume's captured pirate queen. He's full of overheard gossip about a new colonial administrator who's carefully disassembling her trial in London. They emerge from that encounter with a valuable addition to the crew and a consort-ship captain much less likely to drown himself in rum.

They detour around Cuba again in pursuit of a small gold transport. With both ships anchored off the coast of Jamaica, they put in at Port Royal to restock and gather more news. The British Navy lost their trail in Charlestown, it seems, and there are three ships of the line patrolling around the Carolinas. It's as if they think the destruction was political, not personal. The Spanish are keeping close-lipped, no news of the Urca gold at all.

And Nassau hasn't fallen apart without Eleanor Guthrie. Not even close. The whore Max has the tavern now, but she doesn't have the distribution network. That fell to some newcomer with a commission from the Lord Governor of the Carolinas.

Flint's damned if Peter Ashe is getting his hands on Nassau from beyond the grave.

There isn't what you'd call a plan yet, but he can feel it coming together in his mind. With Charlestown they've proven how dangerous even two ships can be to the colonies. Six or a dozen, if they can get the captains, if they can get the crews... Miranda was right. He's going to let them burn.

He leaves Silver collecting more gossip from the barmaid. Two legs or one, the new quartermaster can be trusted to get a good price for supplies. Vane, on the other hand, needs a minder far more often.

Vane's sat down at a table with a woman in men's clothing. Red hair, soft hat, that enforcer he had on the Ranger. Flint remembers her from the beach when Eleanor Guthrie banished Vane for taking his revenge on Max for Silver's scheme with the Urca schedule. Jack Rackham's woman, the one who always carried multiple blades.

By the looks of it, one of them is close to being in Vane's gut. Flint walks over before there's blood to mop from the floor.

"Flint," Vane says. "You know Anne Bonney?"

The woman gives him a hesitant nod.

"In passing. Here from Nassau?"

"Visiting." Anne's wary like the kind of stray dog that'll bite you when you come too close. "Picking up a few things."

"You and Jack still with Max?" Vane asks.

"More or less."

Flint leans back, giving her as much space as possible at the table. "I heard Nassau changes fast now."

"Lots of places do," she agrees. "Like Charlestown changed into a hole in the ground."

Vane bares his teeth. "I might've had something to do with that. New landlord driving Nassau into a hole?"

"He's fixing one," she says. "Some idiot shot up the fort, remember?"

Flint takes a long, very patient breath, because he's not going to give Vane the satisfaction of holding him back.

"Who's the new man?" Vane asks. "Colony-bred, or fresh from London?"

Anne knocks back the rest of her beer. "East India Company, Jack says. Indiaman ship, and a whole crew of East Indians. Flamel's English, but gone native, clothes, food, the lot."

"And the planters in the interior went for it?" Flint remembers how much effort Miranda made to fit in with the Puritans.

"He's got some plantation slaves working on the fort, so it looks that way. He's got his own men working the warehouses. Hired a lot of Miss Guthrie's old crew."

Flint files that away. Once they're in Nassau, he can ask Mr Scott to look up the girl Eleanor had running the tavern.

"Town's quiet," Anne adds. "Less trouble in the streets. Each new crew comes in, captain needs to go up to the fort, square things with the new rules."

Flint exchanges a look with Vane. That is a complication.

He leaves the conversation to Vane for the next few minutes, gossip about whatever old shipmates are now working for Jack Rackham of all people. Flint lets it wash over him and watches Silver across the room, especially the way the quartermaster's carefully not looking at them. He guesses the Max thing might be a sore point, since the girl ended up paying for Silver's schemes and now Anne and Rackham are working with her. Which reminds him of the other matter he needs news on.

"Anyone got any interesting prizes?"

Anne Bonney looks at him with eyes as blank as rocks on the shore. "Just the usual. We're not hurting for money."

So either the Urca gold's still there, or someone managed to both get it and keep their mouths shut.


	5. Abigail

**V. Abigail**

The Nassau fort is much more pleasant when not viewed from the dungeons. Dian, the doctor, has commandeered a room with a southern window and set Marcus's new employees to crafting shelves. They are ready two weeks into their sojourn in the fort, and Abigail helps the old woman set out her trove of boxes and bottles despite having no idea how to read the intricate labels. Malika is perched in the window with her embroidery, occasionally pitching in with translation.

Abigail isn't sure what Dian's original language is, but her vocabulary in the language of the crew of the Eye of Lakshmi tends to vernacular that makes Malika giggle. Abigail tries her best with the words she's learned so far, but they resort to gestures as often as not.

Gestures, it turns out, are very effective at explaining which of the mixtures are emetics, and how to arrange them according to the degree of misery they induce.

They're at the bottom of the coffer now, where the bottles are dusty and mossy. Abigail points at a box with a symbol that she's learned to recognise as either 'man' or 'idiot'. Dian, in her experience, uses the words interchangeably.

Dian also uses very strange gestures to explain this medicine. Abigail looks helplessly at Malika, who almost topples off her perch with giggling.

"No words," she admits in her developing English. "Not can tell."

"I'll ask Fu-tien," Abigail offers. The handsome navigator is Malika's husband.

Dian cackles, and Malika waves her hands. "No, no! Fu-tien not know!"

"Then I will ask subahdar," she says. Or she'll make Marcus ask Fu-tien. She has a feeling Malika is dissembling.

She's proven right as Malika jumps down to join them on the floor. The young woman leans in conspiratorially. "No subahdar. Not daughter ask. This is... husband-wife medicine."

Dian repeats her gesture gleefully. Abigail flushes to the ears and pulls her scarf over her head to hide it.

They barely manage to catch their breath when the door opens. Fu-tien waits patiently as all three women cackle hysterically again.

"The subahdar is on his way back," he tells them. "Miss Abigail, you wanted to know."

"Thank you, Mr Fu-tien." She manages to stumble upright with Malika's help. "You didn't need to come yourself."

He grins, and it's Malika's turn to blush and hide her face. Abigail has just a little of their story, but she's sure they haven't been married for long.

"Two most beautiful women in Nassau," he says gallantly. "I had to."

She curtsies. "I won't ask you who's the more beautiful. A lady should not."

His teeth flash. "If you ask, I will say the one who plays beautiful music."

Malika hides her face with both hands this time. At night, they can sometimes hear her play a four-stringed lute.

"I am adept at the harpsichord," Abigail informs him. "It's not my fault we don't have a harpsichord."

"I'm sure you would astonish us."

She mimes a strike at his shoulder with an invisible fan as she sweeps out of the room.

The set of rooms she and Marcus share overlook the courtyard of the fort. The carpets and draperies from the Eye contribute to the habitable state, as does the new furniture, put together by the same hands as Dian's new office. As she enters, Marcus has already shed the white wig and is in the process of untangling his cravat, but when he looks up, he abandons the pursuit and instead opens his arms.

She hugs him with all the strength she can muster. Whenever he leaves, all she can see are Miranda's blank eyes, her father's face slack in death, Mrs Wootton's blood soaking into the deck of the ship.

His lips brush her hair. "Hush, Abigail. What happened?"

The last two months happened, she doesn't say. Instead she hides her face in his chest until she's sure she's no longer in danger of crying.

"Fu-tien disparaged my ability to play music," she informs him finally. "I cannot help I'm best at the harpsichord."

Marcus chuckles, the sound rippling through her. "I should take you to visit Mr Underhill the next time. He has one, and it doesn't even look neglected."

Her fingers find the loose end of his cravat. "Would I have to dress like a lady?"

"You're dressed as a lady. The latest patterns from Kolkata. As opposed to this justaucorps, which was last in fashion in London at the turn of the century."

That does make her laugh and she disengages to pick up his wig. "You only dress in India clothes because you can't get the latest London fashions?"

"I dress in them because they're comfortable." Marcus wanders behind one of the screens that divide their living quarters for a semblance of propriety. "European clothing is confining and confounding."

"Will you be going back to India? When you're finished here?"

There is a long pause that she attributes to him changing his shirt. "I think so."

Abigail doesn't ask him to take her with him. She's learned not to make plans beyond the next turn of the game, especially not with so many cards in play. One of them is the Meditations and its dedication, safely hidden under her pillow.

"Was Mr Underhill helpful?" she asks instead. "In whatever you are trying to do?"

"I am trying to run an island," he says wryly. "Whatever else is there?"

She waits until he emerges in his usual clothing to give him an arch look.

"They're fully convinced I'll serve their needs better than the Royal Navy," he relents. "And they're severely underinvested. Kalyan assures me we'll get a tidy profit from that loan in a month's time, once the harvest is in."

Abigail arranges herself decoratively on a chair with the embroidery she started last week. "Are you going to tell Miss Max how you're using her gold?"

"If anything, it would be the Spanish king's gold." Marcus taps her shoulder in passing. "I'm certain I was taught that young ladies should not pay attention to women of Max's profession."

She draws a needle through the cloth. "I've learned to pay attention to everything, because all information can be useful. One never knows when the knowledge of a secret passage can lead you to a fort that a pirate and a whore are using to store stolen Spanish gold. An unscrupulous man could use information like that to forward his own cause."

"I think you're disparaging my honour. Fortunately it has been years since I had any."

"You can do honourable things," she says sweetly. "You didn't take up Max's offer the last time she came to talk about the gold."

"You weren't supposed to be watching."

"All information can be useful. Though if what she did isn't enough to convince a man to give her anything she wished for, I must conclude that poetry overstates the effectiveness of feminine wiles." She's certain her ears are burning, under her loose hair and the scarf.

"That," he says calmly, "depends on the participants of the act. And I'd rather you not practice these wiles until I am no longer responsible for your actions."

Abigail pulls her feet up to the seat. "What are you going to do with the gold? The hold of the Eye of Lakshmi isn't big enough."

"And it would be hard to convert it to gems in the Americas," he agrees. "I'm keeping that card on the table. Especially since until Max's pet captain turned up with it, everyone was convinced it was Captain Flint's chosen prize. That man's name turns up in too many stories in this place."

"You're waiting for him, aren't you?"

Marcus stands at the window, watching the construction's progress. Rebuilding the crumbled walls was the first priority, but now they're being reinforced and expanded in sharp angles towards the sea. Inside, there are new warehouses and spaces for what is shaping up as both fortress and commercial operation. Abigail sits in on meetings to discuss the work, though she understands maybe one word in five. She's determined to learn Bengali by the turn of the year.

"I feel I've been chasing his shadow since I remembered Nassau," Marcus says. "He's shed all the blood I wanted to shed, and left me with hands bloodied for no reason worthy of the act. I hear the tiger in the night, and you don't go into a jungle to hunt the tiger. You draw him in with bait."

"Nassau," Abigail says. She abandons the embroidery and stands at his side. "The gold. Me."

He puts his arm around her shoulders. She wishes she felt safe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those keeping score at home - Dian's Vietnamese, Fu-tien is Chinese (and a washed-up Qing Dynasty civil servant with a talent for languages) and Malika is Bengali. Kalyan, the captain, is Marathi - the owner of the Eye of Lakshmi poached him from Kanhoji Angre's fleet - as are about half the crew, with the rest being a mix of random-ethnicity Lascar and Bengali, including a few Bantu who signed on in Mombasa.


	6. Flint

**VI. Flint**

Vane's sprawled in a chair in the Miranda's cabin like he has no worries in this world, but Flint's able to read him better now. The fact that out of the four of them here, in charge of this voyage - both captains, Billy Bones and Silver - only Vane himself is from the Renegade is because of the disparity in the size of their forces and the trust they have in their men. Vane's still coming to terms with what remains of his half-wild crew and the handful he picked up in Port Royal and Tortuga, barely enough to sail his ship. Flint has men enough to crew about half the guns in his much bigger warship, but he also has an accord with his quartermaster and bosun that means he can leave the ship in their hands should the need arise, say, to go unarmed into Nassau's rebuilt fort to pay his respects to this stranger from the East India Company who doesn't seem to be hanging pirates thus far.

Vane's less certain of a rescue, but Flint does owe him. And Vane's the one itching to move, to strike, to get past this formality and put together whatever plan lets him move.

Flint's plan is coming together slowly. The Urca gold first, fuel for the fire that will forge the new path out of Miranda's last words and his own anger. He's lost the dream of civilisation in Charlestown with her, he's lost Thomas, and the missing book is just physical proof of it. He's shot that dream to pieces with cannon, he spilled its blood with Peter Ashe's. But in that funeral pyre he's found a freedom. Let's make it bigger.

He hasn't shared much of that with Vane or Billy yet, and Silver only because he needs to verbalise it to someone and the man's always in his cabin, when he isn't knocking into walls on the crutches he hates. For now, what he tells them is that they all need more men. Nassau is the only answer, and that only if it can be made the capital of this pirate kingdom, bolstered by the fall of Charlestown and a sustained campaign of terror that will draw recruits to their side. The gold will help. It shouldn't be too hard to learn who left the island for enough time and came back with money to spend.

"I still think we should blow the fort to pieces to start with," Vane mutters.

"Whatever happens, we'll need a base to operate from. And Nassau needs some kind of structure. We'll go see the man and learn what his plan is."

Billy Bones crosses his arms. "If you're not back within two hours, we go to the tunnels."

"What if this friend of Governor Ashe appreciates you killing him so much he invites you to dinner?" Silver offers. The old grin's designed to rattle Vane; it doesn't appear much nowadays.

And it works. "Fuck you."

"Keep a glass trained on the top of the fort," Flint says. "If it goes well, one of us will come up there."

"They might arrest you and parade you anyway," Silver points out.

"Same as Charlestown," Vane says. "Hands up, start shooting."

Flint looks from Silver to Billy. "Sit tight. We'll try to stay as long as possible, find out as much as possible about what forces they have and where they're stationed. Wait till we get back."

"You think there's a chance Flamel won't get in the way?" Billy asks.

"No. But the tunnels worked before. We'll catch him by surprise, either make him see the advantage of working with us or take over as much of the organisation as we can."

Billy's eyes remain cautious. Some of it is because he doesn't know the way into the tunnels themselves. Flint's not sure when he started trusting Silver not to stab him in the back immediately, but for now he's stuck with the little rat.

"Play nice," Vane rasps. He's grinning enough for the both of them.

The boat from the fort is waiting for Flint and Vane. The ultimatum to pay court to the fort before entering the harbour included a period of consideration that's long enough for all their conferring and preparations. The men know well enough that they're going nowhere without their captains, not marked for death the way they are as the raiders of Charlestown.

In the boat, the dark-skinned crew give them space. There is no talk among the rowers apart from the skipper's commands in something that sounds like a dialect of Spanish, or maybe Portuguese.

"They look East Indies to you?" Vane asks him quietly.

"Yes." It's no secret in the colonies that Flint learned his seamanship in Europe. "I've seen them in London. The one in the third row on the left, he's been flogged under ship's discipline. The East India Companies are worse than the Navy about that."

"Slavers?"

"They pay the European seamen well enough. Natives..." He shrugs. He supposes it's at least better than the way the Spanish worked the Indians of these islands until they all died.

"No white officers." Vane grins. "Maybe they killed them and came here to get away, like Avery."

"There's Flamel. I don't think he's a renegade." Not with a recommendation from Peter Ashe, at least.

Vane shrugs. "Pity."

They land at the corner of the beach nearest to the fort. There isn't a crowd, and that makes Flint wary most of all. No-one could have missed the red crosses on the Miranda's sails, and yet the nearest people are by a shack three hundred yards away.

Half the crew of the boat surrounds them as they walk to the fort. A month on, it looks like his bombardment never happened; the walls are  rebuilt and reinforced with a glacis of earth, the crumbled towers now jutting out at precisely calculated, diamond-sharp angles. The design is straight out of a manual, and in a previous life Flint's fairly sure he's read that manual. Whoever designed it knew Vauban's books.

He has a moment of doubt about the tunnels escaping notice if the reconstruction was this thorough. Too late now. Onwards.

The gate is new and polished to gleaming. In the courtyard they're met by a man who makes even Flint pause. They're ten thousand miles from the Middle Kingdom and between the green robes and the queue of dark hair, here's a picture of a mandarin.

"The fuck?" Vane asks eloquently.

The Chinese man raises his eyebrows. "Welcome to the Nassau Fort. My name is Fu-tien. Mr Flamel is waiting for you. Please follow me."

Not only does he speak good English, under the strangely pronounced consonants Flint can hear an upper class intonation. The man's learned English from a blue-blood of some kind.

Past a wide hall, they enter a corridor lined with so many draperies you can't see the stone on the walls. Vane slinks along as if the floor had teeth.

"Didn't look like this when I had the place," he mutters.

Fu-tien has good hearing. "We did have to remove a quantity of garbage."

Vane growls. Their guide looks unimpressed.

Flint flexes his foot as he walks, making sure the knife in the boot is easy to get to. No-one's searched them, which is either stupid or very sure they're not going to be close enough to anyone to do serious damage before they're persuaded not to.

Somewhere ahead, there is the sound of a crowd. The air smells like a merchant ship come home from the East Indies, like spices and herbs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At the time, many nations formed East India Companies. The leaders were the Dutch, while their competition were the English, French and Danish East India Companies. The Portuguese administered a formal colony in India since the early sixteenth century, which is why Portuguese heavily influenced the international pidgin of sailors in the Indian Ocean.
> 
> The Bahamas are part of the West Indies, and the people there identify as West Indians at times to this day, but the native people of the Lucayan tribe were practically eradicated by the Spanish by being captured and enslaved on Hispaniola. For Flint, "Indian" is the term he'd use - by the time of Black Ships, the term West Indian was starting to be used for inhabitants of the West Indies regardless of ethnicity.
> 
> Sébastien le Prestre de Vauban was Louis XIV's chief military engineer and the authority on fortress design at the time.


	7. Abigail

**VII. Abigail**

Abigail is watching Eme prepare the workers' evening meal, bossing around half a dozen helpers. The arrangement is less fraught than the dinner for the crew of the Eye that will follow, simply because of no rules about whose food is allowed to touch whose, and who is allowed to eat what. In the first week, the ship's cook had to mediate several fights about the presence or absence of onions.

Abigail is just pleased to have food in front of her. When she remembers turning up her nose at bland dishes served in her school, she thinks it happened to another woman. A child who didn't know how much worse things could be than undersalted meat.

Eme offers her a piece of fried yam, glistening with the island's own molasses. "Try this, Miss. Can it be dinner for the officers too?"

"Make more, they'll ask for seconds." Abigail licks her fingers clean. Manners in the company of women belong to a previous life, too. "I don't know how you manage to feed all these people in time."

"Good planning." Eme's teeth flash. "They eat what I give them, not like at the tavern."

Abigail laughs and steals another piece from the giant pan. Eme had been the first person she'd thought of when captain Kalyan announced they'd need more people in the kitchens to feed the builders as well as the crew. She remembers the taste of that first meal in the tavern after Eleanor Guthrie freed her. Nothing since has tasted as good, though Eme's new creations come close.

They both look up as a bell tolls four times. It's the sign for new ships in the harbour, and preparations for receiving visitors. At least with this timing, the builders will be out of the way eating. The production they put on for pirate captains is meticulously planned, and one of the rules is that Fu-tien in his majordomo regalia is the only person their visitors see from the gate of the fort to what Marcus insists on calling the audience chamber.

Abigail has her own role to play, so she piles food into two bowls before fleeing Eme's kingdom for upstairs.

Marcus accepts his meal with a preoccupation that's miles away from his usual anticipation of playing the overlord. Abigail gives him room to brood while she eats and selects their clothing. White and gold today, matching and solemn and impressive. She's usually at his side during these audiences, with Malika and Raina sitting in as her attendants and the ship's officers flanking them with weapons drawn. It feels at once as the grandest pageant and the same vicious game she's been playing since the Fancy swooped in on her, but today she finds her attention drifting.

Marcus is standing at the window as she emerges from her bedroom, staring as if the walls have turned transparent to reveal whatever sails have come over the horizon. She sinks down to the bench by his feet, and he rests his hand on a curl of her hair that has escaped the shawl.

"Red crosses on a man'o'war," he says. "Either Spain has decided to reclaim this territory, or Captain Flint has finally returned."

She catches his hand, tangling their fingers. "Was Max right? Is Captain Vane with him?"

"There is a second ship. It should be the Fancy." He squeezes her hand. "Are you going to be all right, in a room with that man?"

"I would like a word or three," she admits. "About his manners and his deeds. I haven't made up my mind yet."

"Your word will be law."

She looks up. "Even if I decide to have him killed? Strung up on a cross like he did to Mr Guthrie, or his head cut off and posted on the beach?"

He crouches next to her. There's something brittle and dead about his smile. "I won't take your vengeance from you. It's all in your hands."

"What about your vengeance? Did you take it?" Daring, she slides her other hand up his wrist, to the scars she's only ever touched when one of them cries out at night. "Did you kill them?"

He shakes his hand. "I killed one of the guards, but not the man who put me there. Not my own father."

Her breath comes in shallow. "You couldn't bring yourself to kill him?"

"I wasn't in time." He sounds like he's discussing the weather. "By the time I had money enough to buy news, my father perished in the Caribbean. His ship fell prey to the Walrus."

"Captain Flint's old ship," she whispers. "What are you going to do to him?"

"I would like a word or three. I haven't made up my mind yet."

She wonders if she looked as terrifying, saying those words.

He kisses her forehead, then rises to change his outer clothing. From her perch, she watches the scars on his skin. The wrists, the back, a shallow line across the ribs. Four parallel lines across one shoulder. All disappear under white and gold brocade, with more gold added in rings and chains. The better to impress men whose existence depends on their ability to beget terror with their mere appearance.

A knock on the door tells them their visitors are approaching the fort. He offers her his hand.

"It's not just your father," she says. "It's not just him you want words about."

He lets his hand drop.

"Tell me." She brings her hands together. "Don't let me walk in blind."

"The last time I saw your father, he came to visit me in the lunatic asylum," he says. The words are rounded like a narrator's in a play. "We discussed several subjects, but he had one piece of news for me. In exchange for my cooperation, my father allowed two people dearest to me to escape the country. Peter told me they vanished in the Bahamas. They were rumoured to have fallen prey to pirates. He had no names for me, and I did not manage to talk to him again, but you supplied the only clue to their fates that I've had since."

"Marcus Aurelius," she whispers.

He does not offer his hand again. She rises by herself and follows him out of their chambers. Malika and Raina are already waiting, as are the guards. He sits on the carved chair in the middle of the dais, and she drapes herself over the bench next to him, close enough to whisper if need be, her shawl pulled low to shadow her face. The sultan of Nassau and his mysterious woman, an ornament on his arm.

She watches the angle of his jaw, the lips that can smile and scowl and soothe her nightmares. Golden hair shot through with more grey than suited to his age, the relic of a time when he was only considered a madman. The hands, resting on the jewelled handle of a sword, that would have gladly thrust that blade through the heart of her father, or his own sire. The hands that wrote the dedication in that book, to his truest love. Then she makes up her mind as to what words to have with him.

She shifts closer as the sounds of footsteps approach. She brings her lips to the ear of the man she knows to be Thomas Hamilton, her godfather, dead and resurrected, and if she does not speak, he'll never forgive her. He might not forgive her if she does.

"When I met Captain Flint, he introduced himself to me," she says. "His name is James McGraw."


	8. James

**VIII. James**

They enter a wide hall. Armed men are stationed under every wall, all East Indians with guns and curved swords. There is a dais at the end, with an honest-to-God throne and carpets and divans. A couple of veiled women are sitting in the back, flanked by men in clothes glittery enough to be important. One woman is seated next to the man on the throne. They're dressed in matching white and gold, and when they enter she's just pulling back from either whispering something to the man or kissing him, so the veil on her hair obscures his face.

Then she sits back and looks at them and is no longer in the way. Flamel looks at home on his throne, tan enough that if not for the light hair Flint'd take him for an Indian, and his face is-

-is-

-is-

At his side, Vane shifts, clears his throat, then steps forward.

"I am Charles Vane, of the Renegade," he says. It's a good mix of self assurance and threat covering confusion. "With me is Captain Flint of the Miranda. We came to discuss terms."

The world has narrowed to long fingers clenched on the carved arms of a chair. One is slightly crooked, as if broken and mended badly during those-

Ten years. Ten turnings of seasons. Ten years since he, since they, since.

"Not only terms."

Ten years, and that voice, so bright and confident, a perfect mask for playing a part. There have always been meanings within meanings within secrets, in that voice. Passages of the Bible and offers both veiled and terrifyingly direct. Every man needs a partner.

"I fear we must discuss history before we can agree on terms."

Vane frowns. "We have no history."

"You have history with my ward. I promised her that she could have her say."

Those blue eyes move, turning away for a moment. The woman in white and gold rises from her seat.

She's small, and the veil on her hair covers most of her face. Instead of a dress, she's wearing trousers and a long coat past her knees, like a frock coat but buttoned. The embroidery on it is real gold.

She stops very close to Vane, who looks like he's considering stepping back. She barely comes up to his shoulder.

She pushes her veil back. Vane swears, his hand going to the knife in his sleeve.

Abigail Ashe looks at him calmly. "Is it true that you cut off Edward Lowe's head with a knife?"

"Yeah." Vane does take that step back. "He was asking for it."

"Thank you," she says. "I don't think I'd be strong enough to wield that knife."

Vane makes a vague sound that might have started off as 'you're welcome'.

"Then you offered ransom to my father," Abigail continues. "I do not blame you for it. Piracy is your livelihood, and you have a crew to provide for."

Vane straightens, bringing up something that looks like a smile.

"I blamed you for little before coming back to this fort," she says. "Until I saw that it does offer secure rooms less damp and rat-infested than the dungeons, and that its stores had bread without maggots."

"Now wait-"

She talks over him as if he hadn't spoken. "But I am still grateful for what you did to Lowe. So I think that if you spend a night in that same dungeon, I will consider justice served."

"Wait a-" Vane looks around at the armed men. "Those weren't the terms-"

"We will talk terms in the morning." That bright voice carries so easily from the dais. "Be grateful Miss Ashe is merciful."

"Flint," Vane growls.

Somehow, words appear. The blue gaze is helping, that little glint that always meant, play along and I'll be very nice to you afterwards.

"Do it, Vane. You've done worse when your crew was disrespected. Be grateful it's just a night in a cell."

Vane snarls, but the girl holds her ground. At her gesture, four men approach to escort him out. She turns and curtsies to the dais, then follows after Vane. She looks like a queen, and that facility with expressions and words comes from her father. From the man who died in Charlestown next to Miranda's body. And she has not looked at his killer once.

"Leave us." The command disperses the rest of the crowd, though the Chinese man, Fu-tien, looks both confused and concerned. He says something in a language that isn't European, receiving a curt, fluent response. He's the last one to leave the hall.

There is only the two of them, and half the room between them. Marcus Flamel of the East India Company and Captain Flint, the most feared pirate in the Caribbean. Masks, masks, and more masks.

James McGraw takes a step forward, then another. Thomas stands up like he has barely any strength left, and when he steps down from the dais, James reaches out to steady him. His fingers brush the white brocade of a wide sleeve.

"Peter said you were dead," Thomas says.

"He lied. He wrote to us of your death."

It feels like he's bleeding with every word.

"That was true, to his knowledge." Thomas's lips pull thin for a moment. "Miranda. She was with you in Charlestown."

James can just see her here, laughing, crying, admiring the carpets, pouring them tea and letting them not talk until they're ready. He thought he was missing her before.

"Peter had her killed. I killed him for her."

"Good," Thomas says, like he means it.

There are more ghosts in the room. "I killed your father."

"Good."

That one word is an absolution James never expected, a stone he didn't know he was carrying until it's removed.

Thomas raises his hand to his collar. The buttons are blue gems set in gold, like his eyes, and his fingers slip on them.

"Your men will need reassurance I haven't killed you," James offers. "And if mine don't see me on the battlements before sunset, they'll storm the fort through the tunnels."

"I posted guards in the tunnels." Thomas sounds almost affronted. "Yes. Let's go."

They walk side by side, arms inches away. James knows his hands are trembling with the urge to touch, to dispel his conviction that he's conjured up a ghost in his grief.

Thomas gives orders in a strange language before they start to climb the stairs.

"You speak Indian?"

"Bengali. It's the language of Kolkata."

James wants to ask a thousand questions, ten thousand for each year they missed, and if he can touch Thomas, and if he remembers, they remember, each moment of their time together the same way. Instead they climb side by side until they emerge to the sight of the setting sun. The sky is blood-red, shading toward black.

They turn to the left, along the length of fortifications that face the sea. The damage here was the most extensive, and much of the wall is rebuilt entirely, with new stone huts that house the cannon. Behind them, old crumbling stone is piled on top of a new tower that still needs a new crown, the low remains of the parapet the only barrier between the floor and the sea sixty feet below. James sees white and gold fluttering in the wind like a flag.

"Abigail!" Thomas shouts.

The girl turns sharply towards them. Her fingers open and the wind tears her veil out of her hand, blowing it landwards. Turning, her foot comes down not on stone, but loose gravel.

She screams, and James is already moving, because 'man overboard' is the first nightmare of any sailor. He grabs her wrist. He catches the parapet with his other hand.

It crumbles.

His guns, he has time to think. He destroyed this fort, and now there is only the whitewater at the foot of the wall and Abigail Ashe's panicked eyes. She screams the way she did when Miranda died.

The grip on his arm feels like iron, like an anchor chain. Thomas has one hand on him and the other on a scarf looped around a new and solid piece of wall. He hauls James up just enough to let him get his footing back, and if he's always been strong, now he does it like a sailor.

They drag Abigail back up together. She's crying and clutching at both of them even as Thomas lifts her in his arms. Several people are already running up the stairs, and James doesn't have to speak the language to know Thomas is angry with them for not guarding the girl.

James follows them mostly because of Abigail's grip on his sleeve. There's a dozen people around them by the time she's deposited in what looks almost like a drawing room. The women there descend on her with concern. One of them finally prises her fingers off both him and Thomas, leaving them free.

The women push all men outside, and Thomas turns down the corridor. James is the only one who follows him. The room they enter is even more lavish, with carpets on the walls and painted standing screens.

Thomas locks the door and leans against it. "I told them to always keep an eye on her."

"She'd have been-" James stops, finally putting two and two together. "You thought she'd jump."

Thomas brings his hands up. They're shaking.

James takes a step closer. "The girl who stared down Charles Vane? She wouldn't."

"It gets you, sometimes, months later. Years." Thomas is staring at his hands. "If you think you've lost your old life, if there's no going back."

The sleeves have slid down. There are old scars there. Rope burns, and on the inside of the left wrist, a long jagged line.

James touches Thomas's shoulder. Then he places his other hand on the other shoulder and leans in.

It isn't the same, it can't be the same. Thomas's hands are clenched in the front of his shirt. He tastes of molasses and a better class of tea than James has had in ten years.

Ten years, and nothing has changed at all.

They slowly stop, but remain pressed close, foreheads leaning against each other.

"We are neither of us good men now," Thomas whispers.

"You'll have a way to go to convince me of it."

"I'm planning on it." This close, those blue eyes are like the sea. "You named your ship after her."

"She kept me alive."

"I don't know what kept me alive."

"I wanted to storm that hospital," James murmurs. "Kill everyone inside. She and Peter stopped me. They were convinced it was for show, that your father would bring you home in a month or two."

Thomas smiles in this new, painful way. "Fourteen months. I broke after nine. They tied me up at night, after that."

"You got free?"

"I killed my first man. You never told me how that felt."

"Good," James says. "It's good you killed him."

"I knocked over a lantern and escaped in the confusion. Eight patients and two more guards died in that fire."

"They must have taken the guard's body for yours."

"Yes. I didn't know that, but I remembered you saying the East India Company always needed more men on their ships."

"You, on a ship?" James has to grin at the indignation in Thomas's eyes.

"Your stories were useful."

"I want to sail with you."

"A pirate raid?"

Thomas steals a quick kiss, and James shudders.

"Maybe. I'm definitely not a good man now."

"I may have sailed against the Dutch East India Company. A few times."

James is the one to kiss him this time, hard and fast. "I missed you more than life itself."

"Until the day brake and the shadows flee away," Thomas murmurs.

When James places the quote, they both laugh. The tears come easier, after that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The final quote is from the Song of Songs, of course.


	9. Abigail

**IX. Abigail**

The dungeons are as dark and damp as Abigail remembers.

The only light is the torch in her hand. It crackles and sputters when the flame reaches some impurity in the tar. She is very careful on her way down the stairs.

She thinks she might have been able to sleep, if not for the fall. Even then, if she could lean on Marcus-who-is-Thomas, but she's not about to intrude on them. Let them sleep, while she keeps watch.

And has a conversation.

The guards at the door bow to her. The muffled sounds tell her that all is as she planned.

"If I drop the torch, come in and help me," she tells them. She has practised this sentence in ship-language and they nod in understanding.

The sounds, she thinks, go a long way to convincing them of her safety.

The door barely creaks when they open it for her. The hinges have been oiled; no detail has been spared in the overhaul. Captain Kalyan used to lead footsoldiers in sieges, she knows.

Vane curls up to look at her, but he's shaking and barely able to sit up. The look in his eyes almost stops her. Almost.

Anger, but that's not hate underneath. It's fear.

"What'd you do to me?" he rasps.

The smell is overpowering. She makes a note to order a bath for him in the morning. Thomas won't appreciate his company at breakfast otherwise.

"I could not find sufficiently maggoty bread," she tells him. "So I poisoned your food instead."

He growls, but the moment he tries to stand, he seizes up and starts to retch again.

"It will last for about two more hours," she says.

He glares like a cat unhappy to be bathed.

"You'd have preferred the maggots?"

"Used to maggots," he manages to force out.

"I wasn't." She stands with her back to the door, not quite leaning on it. It's as dirty as everything else in the cell. "You know why I had to do this."

Vane's nod comes reluctantly. "You're showing off. To me, to Flint, to Flamel and his men."

"To myself," she corrects him.

"Hurt someone to cheer yourself?" His eyes are dark in the firelight. "That's like Lowe."

"I can't go that far," Abigail agrees. "It's not safe. And it's not safe to expect a rescue every time."

"There's no such thing as safe, girl. Just freedom or slavery."

She considers him carefully. He's not dressed like a rich pirate, though she supposes her only comparison are Captain Flint's crew, who favour clothing that at least approximates civilisation. Even for an official visit, Vane is wearing a shirt that should never see the light of day and curious amounts of undyed leather. He looks like someone who doesn't care about the rules, or rejects them.

She remembers the first night she met Marcus - no, Thomas. The offer she took.

"There are always choices," she says. "The important thing is to make them."

"Is that when you tell me I could've chosen a righteous life? Didn't peg you for a Puritan skirt."

"A good Christian wouldn't throw a man into a dungeon and poison his food."

He snorts. "More like a pirate. Was your father's corpse even cold before you spread your legs for Flamel?"

For a moment, she simply stares at him. Then she imagines Thomas's response and smiles, as if lost in her own thoughts.

"I doubt that approach would work for you," she tells him. "He prefers partners capable of erudite conversation."

Vane tries to stand up and doubles over again.

"I'm not trying to save you. I'm not trying to save anyone." Abigail wraps her right arm under her left, supporting the torch. "I'm trying to understand."

"Fuck you and your prison."

"Not two months ago, you were the one with the key," she reminds him. "What would you do if you were captured and stripped of all choice?"

"Killed if I could," he admits. "Did. But I never laid a hand on you."

"I know." She watches the leather bands at his wrists and wonders what lies beneath them. "That's why it's only one night."

"And we're square?"

"When the morning comes."

Her decision made, Abigail reaches into a fold in the edge of her dupatta. The pressed herbs form a small packet, glued with syrup against crumbling.

Vane watches her with that feline wariness as she approaches. She crouches and offers the packet on the open palm of her hand.

"It's the antidote. Chew it, and the pain will pass."

He reaches out with a trembling hand. She leans forward, summoning a smile.

He grabs her wrist and pulls. She whimpers, less from being pulled to him, his arm across her neck, than from the grip on her already bruised arm.

"Don't scream-" he starts, rasping in her ear.

"Wait!" she calls out in Bengali, before switching to English. The stench is sharper, pressed as she is with her back to his chest. "If I drop the torch, the guards will come in and beat you."

He draws his breath through his teeth. "You didn't drop it yet."

"I have a choice."

"I could snap your neck right here."

"You'd die." She forces herself to relax, leaning back against him. She's never been this close to any man but her father and Thomas. "That wouldn't be freedom."

"Mad bitch," he says, but there's no heat in it.

She raises her right hand. "Take it. It's not poison, I've tried it."

One of his arms is across her neck, the other holding her waist, so he leans in and takes the packet between his teeth. She counts in her thoughts as he chews, from one to a hundred and then back again.

He shifts and lifts her a little, so that she's sitting on his thigh and they can see each other after a manner. He looks confused.

"What happened to your arm?" he asks.

The bruise on her wrist is starting to shade from red to purple. "I fell. Captain Flint caught me."

"What are you going to put in his food?"

She props her arm on her pulled-up knees, the torch wavering. "Did you see him kill my father?"

"I didn't see him gut him," Vane says. "Saw them on the ground, Ashe bleeding out. Had to yell at Flint to get him to move."

She wonders if she can fashion the end of a scarf into a woman's version of those arm bands Vane wears. Perhaps that can be her next embroidery project.

"I wanted Flint out of there. Bad for business if they hang pirates." He moves his arm again. Her shawl has tangled with the thong around his wrist, the thin fabric catching on a knot. "He wanted to remind Charlestown to fear us."

"He wanted it to burn."

Vane swears quietly. She twists to examine the tangle, but she needs both hands free for it, so she hands him the torch to hold.

"Mad bitch," he says quietly. It sounds like admiration.


	10. James

**X. James**

In his life, James has learned to sleep through everything from storms to tavern brawls. He'd been the envy of his fellow officers when catching a kip in the second line of a naval battle, cannon fire not a hundred yards from them.

He wakes at the first touch of Thomas's fingers in his hair.

They're lying side by side, the way they'd fallen asleep somewhere past the second bell of middle watch. They'd talked till they were sore, the tears hidden in the dark. Thomas's eyes are still red at the edges. Six bells of morning watch, James thinks, by the angle of the light.

"I forgot the colour of your eyes," Thomas whispers. "I thought they were just blue."

"Caribbean light," James manages. "Things look different here."

Those long fingers slip from his hair down to his jaw, playing with the bristles of his beard. He remembers with sudden clarity that night after he came back from Nassau. The only night, the last night, and over the years that overshadowed the memory of just how much appreciation Thomas had for his ship-side beard.

He leans in and rubs his jaw on Thomas's neck. He drinks in that gasp, the full-body shiver. He knows they're getting reacquainted and he should mind his manners, but he's spent a decade shedding civilisation and his instinct is to grab and claim.

Then Thomas runs his hands over his back, arse to shoulders and down again, with that casual strength that holds him in place even if he wanted to move away. James mutters something that might be "more" or "harder". He's not sure, and he's too busy placing small bites down Thomas's throat.

Fingers in his hair again, tangling, pulling. He has the time for half a groan before Thomas is kissing him so damn slow that his brain feels like melting.

Thomas is still wearing the trousers from that white brocade suit, and they're tied with a drawstring that defeats James's blind efforts. He laughs into the kiss and pushes James's hands away before James can just tear the damned string in pieces, so James has to retaliate where he's allowed to touch, over and under Thomas's shirt. There are new scars there, but he concentrates on the way Thomas shifts and pulls closer, almost, almost-

A tug, a lunge, and he's sprawled on his back, pressed down into the soft mattress, and having his legs pushed apart would be less embarrassing than the ease with which he parts them of his own accord. Thomas's fingers are that much more clever, the buckles of his belt not even a challenge.

Fuck, but he's missed that hand on his cock.

He digs his hands into Thomas's arse and pulls until they're pressed flush. One of them moans, or they both do. The other too-clever hand is pushing his trousers down, pushing his arse-cheeks apart, and that makes him go rigid for a moment with how much he wants it.

Neither of them's the bright side of forty now, but pirate life's kept him in shape enough to kick his trousers off with losing the minimum of contact. He brings his knees up on either side of Thomas's waist and snarls something he's not even sure started off as words.

Thomas rolls his hips, just pressure, and it's enough for James's breath to stop for a moment.

"That's a change," Thomas murmurs between his own gasps. "Remember how I had to persuade you into it for an hour?"

"Must've rubbed off on me," James manages, and Thomas is laughing, so he grabs him by the hair and hauls him in because all that laughter's his now and not only in his nightmares.

Thomas's fingers are still too nimble for someone James is doing his best to drive out of his mind. It feels so damn good to have someone else's hands on him, in him, and there's another moment when his thoughts are gone just before Thomas starts to push inside.

They go still for a moment, Thomas's hips pressed against James's arse, the cock inside him hurting just right. He opens his eyes and watches the way the sweat runs down Thomas's face. That's new, too. London had been too cold for it.

Then he reaches down to grab Thomas's arse. "If you don't move, I'm setting this place on fire before I leave."

Thomas flushes just before he laughs, and if his best commanding growl gets that kind of reaction, James can't wait to turn the tables on him. Though he'll have to plan it later, because right now he's too busy having the living daylights fucked out of him.

They're making up for years, so there's no question of slow and gentle. Thomas is still all muscle and long limbs, force enough to drive the breath out of James with every thrust. They're gasping in whatever small space remains between them. When Thomas lets go of James's hip to wrap his hand around James's cock again, James grabs tighter still, arching to make sure it's still that deep, that intense.

He's babbling Thomas's name until he has to stop because there's no breath left, and he's coming. Thomas lasts just a few thrusts longer and James gets his wits back in time to watch him, eyes closed and all lines erased in bliss.

They start kissing again before their pulse slows down. Now it's slow and gentle, making sure it's them, there, in the morning sun. It shouldn't feel this comfortable, but Thomas has always felt like coming home.

A soft knock interrupts them. James doesn't know the language spoken, but Thomas answers in it as fluently as before, raising himself on his elbows.

"That wasn't Bengali," James mutters. He stretches out with a pleased sigh.

"Yue Chinese. Fu-tien likes ridiculing my pronunciation."

"Fuck. I was happy enough picking up Spanish."

"An obscure language can be useful in negotiations. Or when asking if someone is in need of rescue." Thomas smiles. "I told him all I need is a bath."

"Pro'ly a good idea." James runs his hand down Thomas's back, down scars that feel like flogging. "Later."

"The fort doesn't run itself." Thomas kisses him again, quickly. "Breakfast's in half an hour, two rooms down. I'll see if Captain Vane survived his night in the cells."

"Rats don't drown," James mutters.

Thomas laughs again as he clambers upright. James watches him get ready for the day from under lowered eyelids. That's another thing he should have remembered: how insanely energetic Thomas is after a good fuck. At least this time he isn't writing down brilliant ideas on his shirt sleeve.

Thomas disappears with an armful of clothes and a reminder about breakfast. James takes his time getting up, with his body reminding him of that wrong side of forty thing. Turns out there's a washing area behind a screen by the door, and someone's brought in water that was probably hot when they first woke up. It's fine now to wash in, though he passes on the shaving gear.

He's nosy enough to explore the wide chamber. He's seen the common space and Thomas's bed, but the screens also partition off rooms with chests of clothing and one that holds books. The other bed-space is smaller and looks like no-one's used it since the bed was made, but he finds his copy of Aurelius' Meditations under the pillow. He's last seen it when he lent it to Abigail Ashe.

He leaves the book in place and puts his clothes back on. The breakfast room is already set up with so many foodstuffs that it puts the Hamiltons' spread in London to shame. He remembers his manners enough to wait for Thomas and whoever else is joining them - there are four place settings. He does sprawl in his chair, because if Thomas objects to him not sitting up properly, he'll only have himself to blame.

James recognises Vane by his wary footsteps before he's led in by the girl from the Andromache, the one who helped Scott free the slaves. She gives him a smile as she sets a large teapot on the table.

"Morning," James says. "Where'd you manage to drown?"

Vane snorts, but doesn't deny it. He looks like he's been fished out of the North Sea, and his hair is still damp. Someone's given him a new shirt, which is at least cleaner. "Bath."

"The subahdar will join you soon," the girl tells them as she sets out the hot dishes.

James fishes for her name. "Thank you, Eme."

He's rewarded with a smile before she disappears.

"Vane?" he prompts.

The other pirate scowls. "Ashe threw you in prison, I rescued your arse."

"His daughter wasn't looking to hang you."

"You have no-"

They're interrupted by a woman's shriek. James reaches for his knife before he recognises both the voice and the laughter in it.

Thomas joins them moment later, dressed in European clothes and still fastening up his shirt over damp skin. Abigail is at his side in a demure gown. Her eyes are shadowed with lack of sleep, but she's flushed as well, though she puts on a good face as she greets them.

"Gentlemen," Thomas says warmly.

James throws him a wary look. That's the post-fuck exuberance all right, and he'll be damned if the girl doesn't look like someone who's just been lifted to the ceiling. He'd seen Thomas do that with Miranda once, and Abigail is maybe two thirds of her size.

She busies herself with pouring tea. James gets the second cup and breathes in the scent. The good stuff is rare as hen's teeth in the Caribbean, and he's had it maybe three times since London.

Vane looks at his cup like it's going to explode in his face.

The girl looks straight at Vane as she sips from her own cup, then she gives him an encouraging nod.

James notices Thomas start to reach for the eggs and picks up the dish to offer them to him. He raises his eyebrows, but judging by Thomas's expression they're both in the dark about whatever Vane's problem is.

Not that it ever stopped Thomas from opening his mouth.

"Do feel free to try anything. I'm told my people have improved the quality of provisions from the previous incumbents."

Judging by Vane's puzzled glare, Thomas is probably fortunate Vane doesn't know what incumbent means. James decides not to wait for the shoe to drop, even as he piles his own plate high.

"Food's not poisoned. Would have been much easier to kill us in the night."

Vane scowls again. "She tried."

Abigail looks like a porcelain doll someone pawed over with dirty hands, but she still manages an innocent expression.

"Abigail?" Thomas prompts. "Have you been tormenting our guest?"

"I had a detailed medical prescription," she demurs.

Between whatever Thomas and the girl are plotting - one still coming off the cloud and the girl about to fall over from what looks like lack of sleep, never mind almost dying - James thinks it won't be an easy breakfast. And there's Vane to manage as well, which means another layer of masks. Best get ready to play, then.

"That calls for compensation," he says, letting his voice drop into Flint's manner. "The deal was for a night in the cells, not torture."

"A purgative isn't torture," Abigail says with wide eyes before Thomas has the chance to signal her. "They're a measure of health."

Vane snorts. "I'd like to see you take that one."

"A discussion of monetary terms would be more productive," Thomas says.

It's not the first time they've been in negotiations together, but the first time they're on opposite sides. James sees Thomas retreat beneath the Flamel mask, all foreign manners and languid words, and it makes him feel better about the fact that next to Vane, it's far too easy to put Flint on again.

And when Thomas archly offers terms for barrels of molasses that are twice what Eleanor Guthrie offers, it's easy to pound his fist on the table and growl. "It's cheaper to blow this fort to pieces again!"

It's only because he knows what to watch for that he sees the way Thomas's eyes widen for a moment, the next breath deeper than the one before.

"You're welcome to try," Thomas says steadily. "You will find it somewhat better defended."

"Those prices are more piracy than we do," Vane says. He's picked up the courage to try the food at least, though it's disappearing from his plate far slower than from James's, and the teacup's handle has proven a challenge. "We've crews to answer to. Crews that want profit."

"Crews we need to expand," James agrees. "And ships you need nearby in case the authorities show up unannounced. Fifteen point discount for coordinating patrols with hunting prizes."

"Nine," Thomas counters. "With the guarantee of first offer of information about every other potential prize, unless their pursuit would interfere with island defences. To be decided by mutual consent."

Vane manages to beat Abigail to refilling his cup. "What's to stop us from going straight to Max for those?"

"Miss Maxine and I have an understanding."

James growls, and doesn't miss the way Thomas's fingers tighten on his fork. "Two out of three potential prizes."

"And what would you leave for the rest of the island's pirates?"

"What fucking rest of pirates?" He almost looks at Abigail in apology, but Thomas's darkening eyes are too distracting. "Rackham's green. Hornigold's gone. The rest of them are rats."

"Jack's got brains," Vane murmurs. "Three out of five, and twelve point discount. Don't tell me Max didn't get ten for Jack."

Thomas hesitates, then leans towards Abigail. His eyes are still on James, who takes the chance to bare his teeth.

Blue eyes close for a moment, with a faint smile.

"That will be - provisionally acceptable. Now, as for cargo of manufactured goods..."

It goes quickly after that, the terms growing more reasonable. Which is good, because Vane's starting to sway and look grey, while James is - distracted.

It's Thomas's fault, for looking like he's about to either swoon or put the breakfast table to new uses. There's a foot nudging at James's ankle, and the thought that it's the most contact they can manage with others there makes it even better.

Abigail turns her head to hide a yawn and that, plus the end of the tea, is the signal for the meeting to break up.

"Some small details remain, but we can address them later," Thomas decides. "This afternoon?"

"Over dinner," James agrees, though he's fairly sure they won't get to the food until much later. "Except one thing."

Vane shifts with a sharp look. They've gone over all usual types of prize cargo and ship provisions.

"The Royal Navy took a prisoner who has too much information about Nassau and its defences, as well as about us," James says. "We heard that a new administrator will be bringing her back to the Bahamas. I want your support in removing Eleanor Guthrie from his custody."

He tries for that same look in his eyes. Go along and I'll explain later. Nicely.

It works, because Thomas nods. "Very well. We'll discuss details in the afternoon."

Vane is quiet as they leave the room, as if the words about Eleanor Guthrie bypassed his ears. An Indian servant leads them out of the fort, passing the signs of even more construction work. Vane isn't even bothering to hide his yawning.

"Good deal," he says. "Almost worth the night I had."

"Don't think I could have talked him into adding spanking her for it."

"Little mad bitch," Vane says, in a tone that almost sounds like admiration.

"I'll see if I have better luck alone with Flamel this afternoon. You sleep it off."

"Maybe," Vane agrees.

James is muttering something about leaving his knife before his brain makes the conscious connection between Vane's words and exhaustion. They haven't got far from the breakfast room and he's been committing the path to memory. Thank God, Thomas is both still in the room and blessedly alone.

A moment later he has Thomas out of the chair and pinned up against a wall. He's guessed right about just how much his performance was appreciated. His only regret is that they don't have time for more than this kiss and a few errant thrusts, Thomas's legs trembling as they part.

"Afternoon," James whispers. "If Captain Flint isn't too ill-mannered for you."

Thomas is leaning against the wall for balance, his breath laboured. "I'd say not. Unless Kalyan kills me first for the deal I just gave you."

"We can renegotiate." James steals another kiss, then reaches down for a more thorough touch.

He leaves Thomas behind him still flushed, clothes rumpled and hair in disarray. For once he's the one with the urge to start writing down ideas. There will be a British fleet to defeat.


	11. Abigail

**XI. Abigail**

Abigail barely has time to duck out of the way before Flint saunters down the corridor. She slips back into the breakfast room once he's gone. One look at Thomas is enough to set her own cheeks burning, so she turns around to pour them both tea from the new pot.

He leans over her shoulder to take his cup, clothes thankfully fastened. "I do hope this is only tea."

She giggles. "I got the purgative from Dian. Once I told her what Vane and his men did, she agreed he probably needed it."  
"I'll have to talk with Fu-tien and Malika about what exactly they enable by translating for you."

"They didn't," she says primly. "I can talk to Dian very well about some things. We have - gestures."

He pulls her close, and for a moment she thinks he's about to lift her up again. Instead he hugs her tightly. She leans against him, feeling every ounce of her exhaustion.

He kisses her hair. "How long has it been since you slept?"

"Since last morning? At least?"

He takes the cup out of her unresisting hand and lifts her up properly this time, one arm under her legs and the other around her shoulders. "I think it's time for bed."

She catches the string at the collar of his shirt. "Did you sleep?"

"Yes."

"So Captain Flint doesn't kick?" she asks quickly, before the blush can catch up with her.

He's grinning. "James has perfect manners in bed. And at the table, if he so chooses. I do hope you don't hold my choice of company against me."

She wrinkles her nose even as they enter their chambers. "Of course I do. He has freckles."

Thomas's laughter shakes her like a ship in a gale. "I am very fond of freckles."

He lays her gently on her bed, and she takes the opportunity to clamber up to hold on to his shoulders. "And his hair is red!"

"Unmistakeably." He leans in. "You'd need to see him without his shirt to properly appreciate both."

She hides her face in his shoulder, aware she's redder than an apple. "He has a beard, too."

Thomas leans against the headboard, cradling her head. "You will change your mind when you've grown for a few years more. And by then you will be terrifying, you magnificent brat."

Abigail wriggles just enough to draw his hands to the fastenings of her gown. "I think Captain Vane will listen to you. Or to Flint. James. He'll listen to him first."

"And James is mine," he agrees, making short work of her gown. "What do you know about Eleanor Guthrie?"

"I only met her once, properly." She recalls that night as one of three that changed her story. "She's very brave. She's willing to do anything to reach her goals. And she and Charles Vane loved each other, until she took me from him."

His fingers start on the ties of the stays. "Did you see his face, when James mentioned her?"

She nods. "I don't think he'll kill her, if she comes back. I think for getting her back, he'll do anything you wish."

"She'll be a complication. But between your words and James's, I can adapt to that complication."

She sits up to help him take off her gown and stays, leaving her in the chemise she sleeps in. "It'll mean war with England."

He nods, and there is something frightening about his smile.

"You promised me a journey," she says. "You promised me room to grow and heal until I reach the age of my majority. Five years from now."

He reaches around her head to slip the pins from her hair. "Is it September already? I'll have to talk to Eme about proper celebrations."

She leans forward, her arms draped around his neck. He patiently pulls the pins away, one by one, until her loose hair covers his hands.

 


	12. James

**XII. James**

James leaves his crew once the sun is past three. The beach camp is set up properly for once, with tents and lean-tos at right angles and alleys between them actually swept. It might be the confusion of a new Nassau regime, approval of their recent good luck with prizes or lingering shock from Charlestown, but his men seem inclined to jump to his orders today. It's been improvement on a day that already started better than any in recent memory.

He does find Silver and Billy Bones talking in hushed voices behind the cook-tent. He hopes they're on the trail of their missing Urca gold, but the falling sun leaves him no time to interrogate them.

The quartermaster and bosun look very relieved when he tells them he might spend the night at the fort again. He leaves them with orders enough to keep them busy, chief of those being scouring Nassau for any men up to crewing the Miranda. He's going to need at least one side's guns fully manned if they're to stand a chance.

Thomas must have made arrangements, because James passes through the fort's perimeter unchallenged save for directions to wait in Thomas's chambers. It feels only a little strange to think how open they've been with spending the last night in the same bed. He's long past shame, or any other trapping of the civilised world, be it European or Indian.

A chest of books is standing open in the main room of Thomas's chambers, and James takes it as invitation to rummage. His search yields a new translation of the letters between Abelard and Heloise, the standalone printing of the Rape of the Lock, a book of dialogues about the relationship between matter and perception, and the interesting-looking memoirs of a French comte written by someone he vaguely recalls is Thomas's distant relative. He settles down in the window with the poem, since it looks expanded compared to the collected edition that fell into his hands the year before.

The sounds of the fort filter in through the window, so he doesn't hear Abigail Ashe until she emerges from her bedroom. The girl has a little more colour in her cheeks, though judging by her bare feet and loose hair that robe is covering a nightgown.

"Good afternoon," James says.

It's the first time she's properly looked at him since Miranda's death. He's not sure what he's seeing in her eyes.

She holds out the Meditations. "Thank you for the loan. I've read it now."

"Did you talk about it with Thomas?" He takes the book, his fingers lingering on the cover. "It's one of his favourites."

The girl's eyebrows pull together. "He hates it. He says that Aurelius didn't know what he was talking about."

James looks down at the familiar title. "What did you think?"

"Nowhere either with more quiet or with more freedom from trouble does a man retire than into his own soul," she quotes. "That's not always true. It's true when there's danger or annoyance outside, but not when there's grief or regret or betrayal."

He has no answer to that, not with all the faces he carries with him into the dark.

"You should be careful with this book," she says. "It - it only took knowing your name and his to work it out."

"He told you his name?"

"He didn't have to read the dedication to know what it said." She perches on the desk, near enough to him to touch if she chooses. "And I knew the story because he's my godfather. If I worked it out, others can."

He gives her a nod. It's good advice, and more friendly than he thought he'd receive after killing her father.

The girl arranges her hair to cover her shoulders. "I know some of the story that circulated in London society. I want to know the truth."

His fingers clench on the cover of the book. "It's an old story."

"It's important. It's about you and him and Miranda and-" Her lips clench for a moment. "My father."

How can he describe his demons to this slip of a girl?

Then she draws herself up, straight and proud as Miranda, as Thomas. "You owe me this story. You owe me an explanation."

He's never told this story - even with Miranda, they spent years dancing around it - but if he promised Peter Ashe to tell it to Parliament, he can do as much for this orphan girl. He starts at the beginning, at his assignment from the Admiralty, and as he puts the pain into words he realises the hurt is lessened.

"We left for the Bahamas the next day," he finishes. "We had no news of Thomas for over a year, then your father informed us of his death."

"Then you killed the Earl," she says.

"He deserved it."

"I know." Her hands are folded in front of her, fingers intertwined. "Why did Miranda want my father dead?"

He lays the books aside before they can slip from his fingers. "Who told you that?"

"The walls were thin."

This time, the words are harder to find. "She - Peter had a clock from her old home that she recognised. When she challenged him, he admitted he received it from Thomas's father, along with his post as governor. In exchange for supporting his accusations against Thomas and myself for sodomy."

For a moment, they are both still. Then she draws a sharp breath, and another and another, like the words are choking in her throat. She raises her hands to her mouth and for a moment she looks like Thomas's stepmother did, just before James killed her.

He jumps to his feet, but stops short of touching her. She stuffs her fingers into her own mouth, rocking there on the edge of the desk. He wonders if she's trying to keep from screaming or to let it out.

The sound of the door startles him, though she doesn't move. Thomas is there, looking in puzzlement between them for a moment.

Abigail crumples, falling from the desk to the floor. James barely catches her before she hits her head. He has a moment to register how light she is before Thomas is kneeling at her back, pulling her against himself, pulling her hands down, her head back against his shoulder. There are white imprints of teeth on her fingers.

"What-?" Thomas begins.

James swallows a curse. "Peter. She asked me to."

The girl's crying now, quiet and ugly little sobs. Thomas pulls her to her feet. She tries to turn around and he holds her arms back until she stops struggling.

James leans on the desk as he gets up. He notices the way Thomas's fingers are pressing into the bruises around the girl's right wrist. The ones from last night, the fall.

"Don't look away, Abigail," Thomas murmurs. It's the same bright voice James remembers. "People like us can't look away from the truth."

She's is trying to say something, but the sobs keep coming.

"Your father was my friend and my betrayer. He had my wife killed. He did his best to have me killed." Thomas kisses the girl's hair. "James killed him for it."

"Thomas-" James shakes his head.

Blue eyes meet his. "Tell her, James. Tell her what you told me last night, about your last conversations with Peter."

Abigail's whimpering quietly, eyes closed and hands clutching at Thomas's wrists, and James has had enough. "Thomas, let go of her."

He thinks it's surprise as much as anything that makes Thomas loosen his grip. The girl flies away from him with a cry. Straight at James, her arms around his neck, and as he hugs her, he wonders if she even knows who she's clinging to.

"Hush," he tries. "Hush, that's enough."

Her hair gets in her face, so he's only vaguely aware of Thomas moving around the room. The girl's sobs are quieting into hiccups by the time Thomas touches his arm and offers a small bottle. She grabs at it gratefully and downs half of it before either of them can stop her.

"You'll have yourself to blame if you end up dancing on the table again," Thomas murmurs. He's smiling, for all the world the doting godfather.

"I can dance a jig," she mutters between hiccups. "If I want to. Captain Flint'll teach me, he's a pirate. Pirates know how to dance jigs. Won't you?"

"His name is James," Thomas says.

"I know. He said." The girl yawns. "I'm hungry."

James catches Thomas's eyes over her head. "What did you give her?"

"A mild sedative decoction. I use it myself."

"It's nice," Abigail adds. "Can I go get breakfast? Supper?"

"Dinner," Thomas corrects her. "It should be ready now. Please tell Eme we'll be a little late. And have Malika help you dress. Blue and green, I think."

She nods obediently, then frees herself from James's arms to give Thomas a brief hug. They hear her open the door and start talking to whoever's waiting beyond it before it closes again.

Thomas turns the ring on his right hand around twice as he walks to the window. "She'll be all right in an hour or so."

"All right?" James feels his hands clench. "All right? After you set her up for a confrontation with her father's murderer?"

Thomas offers a brief smile. Like they're discussing the weather. "She'll be better for it."

"Thomas, you're hurting that girl."

"I'm not letting her run away from herself."

"There's running away, and there's listening to the fact Peter Ashe almost talked me into putting my head in a noose." James remembers how that felt, and what - who - he was doing it for. "I didn't tell you that so you could use it to hurt his daughter."

Thomas turns towards him. "I don't mean to hurt her. I promised to protect her twice. Once to a priest and once, recently, to her as well. I want to keep that promise, but I can't do that if she harbours resentment towards me, or towards you."

"So the answer's to break her mind?"

"She's not broken. She's growing stronger. Would the girl you first met have strength enough to throw Charles Vane in the dungeon and poison him?"

James remembers Abigail on that first night, and throughout the voyage. "I wouldn't put it past her."

That summons a real smile from Thomas. "She's remarkable. And unless she's on our side, she has remarkable potential to spoil my plans."

"There's an our side now?" James comes closer, still wary. He keeps remembering how tight Thomas was holding the girl. "No-one's going to issue any pardons as long as I or Vane or any of our men are around. No way to rebuild Nassau until we're gone."

"I haven't thought about rebuilding Nassau in years," Thomas says. "When I stopped running away, I only ever thought of vengeance."

He says it as if it's that simple to drop everything that's been driving James for a decade. Then again, everything that was driving him is standing right in front of him, burnished by Indian sun and wrapped in blue brocade.

"There was Alfred Hamilton and Peter Ashe. They're both dead. What's left?"

"It wasn't my father who condemned us for what we are. He only used that condemnation for his means."

"The admiralty? Hennessey did what he could. And he's all the way in London."

"London," Thomas repeats. "Society. The British Empire." His voice is still as calm, as light. "If I were in Guy Fawkes' place now, powder under parliament and the torch in my hand, I would gladly set it alight."

"Thomas, this is madness." James wants to hurt himself as soon as he says it.

"They declared me mad years ago." Thomas reaches back without looking for that book in red leather. "It's one thing Aurelius got right: it is crazy to want what is impossible. And impossible for the wicked not to do so."

James knows he's been here before. London rain and a dream of prosperous Nassau. Nassau sunshine and a dream of London burning.

"I've damned myself for you years ago," he says. "What do you want me to do?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The inspiration of this story was literally: what if Thomas Hamilton were Edmond Dantes? Which makes Abigail Haydee, and Flint the guy who kills Mondego just as Monte Christo arrives in Paris.
> 
> There will be a sequel, after season four ends. Mostly because I need to know about Eleanor first. (Possibly two sequels - one happening in the empty space the show left between season two and three, and one covering the arrival of Rogers, Teach and the final pyre.)


End file.
